Can't boot from install cd
 

Hey guys,
Currently I've got redhat running but wanted to tried something different so I downloaded an Ubuntu iso and burnt it to a cd. I put it in the cdrom and tried booting from it but it continues to boot normally. I checked the BIOS and I do have it set to boot from the cdrom first. I also had a slack install cd so I put that in there just to see if it was the cd but it did the same thing--booted as normal. What else could be causing this problem? I've heard to use a floppy boot disk, and I'm going to try booting with Smart Boot Manager on a floppy and see if that works.

Any other ideas?

Are you sure you burnt the iso as an image onto the CD? 'cause if you just wrote it as a regular file, of course it won't boot.
For example, if you're using Nero, you have an option there that lets you burn images.

I did burn it as an image, yeah.

Have you checked the MD5 sum? You might have a corrupted version of the iso file.

And you can mount the CD and check it manually too. . .

Re: Can't boot from install cd
 

Has the slack-cd booted before? I am assuming that the CD drive has booted from cd before? If the drive has booted from cd and the slack-cd was untested, if you can remember the last cd that booted, I'd try loading that in.

Check BIOS for recognition of your cd drive. If recognition is there -- auto-detection like HDs -- check the cd drive light to make sure the computer queries it -- light flashes, BIOS sees it. If no light appears or it drive doesn't spin, obviously something is wrong with the CD drive, the cable, or the IDE controller, IF it is hooked up to an IDE connection that is...if it is hooked up USB, check to see if BIOS has settings for legacy usb support and try enabling it, if it is disabled. I am not too literate on SCSI controllers, but if it is setup that way, you may need SCSI drivers loaded at boot.

Depending on how old your system is, a book disk was used to establish drivers for old cd drives.

You may want to post your cdrom drive details(if possible) and general computer info for a more in-depth answer from the forum.

Best of Luck!

-g

Ok, so I just tried booting with the Smart Boot Manager and the menu did come up, the only problem is that I can't use my keyboard... I've got this problem during normal boot as well, when the grub menu comes up, I can't use my keyboard to select anything....Does this have anything to do with the problem you think?

EDIT: I also just tried setting the cdrom in the BIOS to the first, second and third boot device. It's definitely not reading it...I get a message that says "boot failure, or please insert boot something into boot device, press any key when ready" of course, I can't press a key because the keyboard isn't working, but it definitely doesn't appear to be trying to read the cd...

Thanks for the help

UPDATE:

Well, the problem has been solved. Although in fedora the cdrom was appearing under 0, apparently in the bios it wasn't detecting it correctly or something..anyway, I got a ps/2 keyboard from my roommate and used the Smart Boot Manager and selected to boot from cdrom 1, and it booted correctly from the cd.

Thanks for the replies.